Damien Rice
My Favourite Faded Fantasy
Warner Bros. – November 11th 2014
By Joshua Khan (@blaremag)
Find it at: iTunes | Insound | Official Store
8.3
For Damien Rice, My Favourite Faded Fantasy isn’t a returning stab at success or a strike against those who damned 9 eight years ago. It’s just a record he had to set free. Backdropped by a crippling breakup and a term of isolation, the Irish songwriter’s latest swirls around strains of a mixtape built on “useless dreams” and how “losers love to cling”. They’re honest statements that will make you wince (“You could be my poison, my cross, my razor blade”) but Rice finds a balance, arming his soliloquies with medicating ballads of old (“The Greatest Bastard”) and orchestral apexes that cascade by like forces of nature. The latter plays out to be the record’s greatest strength because while it’s the bouts of loneliness that leave a mark, the art-rock outbursts (“My Favourite…”), reflective thrills (“Long Long Way”) and piano mementos (“It Takes A Lot To Know A Man”) portray the clash of regret and longing that can haunt a soul. They side with the weight Rice carries and unsurprisingly, turn My Favourite Faded Fantasy into a true marvel.
Listen: “The Greatest Bastard”, “Colour Me In”, “The Box” || Watch: “I Don’t Want To Change You”